I tested the iPhone 12 Pro Max against the 11 Pro, Pixel 4a, and Pixel 4XL in extreme low light conditions. Here's what I learned.

In this test, I decided to compare it to the 11 Pro, Pixel 4XL and Pixel 4a. I shot everything handheld to simulate real world conditions. If you want to see how the iPhone 12 Pro (non Max) compares to the Pixel 4XL and the iPhone 11 Pro,check out this post I made a couple months ago.

Here are the results.

• iPhone 12 Pro Max usually goes for a higher ISO and faster shutter speed vs 11 Pro usually going for a slightly lower ISO and slower shutter speed. On the wide angle, it's almost impossible to tell the differences. In a lot of photos, I had to go and look at the metadata to really be able to tell them apart.
  Both Pixel phones are pretty much identical when it comes to low light performance. The pixel 4a takes a bit longer to process because it doesn't have the neural core chip, but the end result is basically the same.
  In extreme low light, the Pixels tend to favour cooler tones and the photos aren't as bright as the iPhones. However, the time it takes to shoot photos is significantly more. For most photos, the Pixels took 3-4 times longer than the iPhones when it came to taking photos. It really shows how outdated the sensor is on the Pixel phones as it needs much longer to capture the information to produce a good photo in low light. But, it also shows how amazing the processing is on Pixel phones. If Google can produce photos this good with a 3 year old sensor, how good can they get with a sensor similar to the iPhone 12 Pro Max?
• Apple enabled night mode on the 12 Pro series in portrait mode, but this isn't available on the 11 Pro. I will say that the LIDAR sensor helps with depth perception, which is something I also covered in my previous post. Since I was shooting with the Pixel 4XL and 4a, I didn't access to portrait mode with Night Sight, which at the time is only available on the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4a 5G.
• On the selfie front, there isn't much difference either. Apple has a nice trick up their sleeve with the front camera. By default, the screen gets very bright on the 12 Pro Max when taking a selfie in extreme low light. On the 11 Pro, it doesn't work by default. You can get similar results by turning on the flash on the 11 Pro. Same goes for the Pixel phones.

if camera quality is all you care about, but you can't afford the latest flagships, I'd say get the Pixel 4a as it's just as good as any high end Pixel phone, and it's almost as good as the iPhones.

Here is a video with sample shots comparing all phones (no ads).

Submitted December 28, 2020 at 10:52PM by imzaeem https://ift.tt/3hqJLcG https://ift.tt/eA8V8J